[thebmax]

That was what I was getting at ;). I had an old boss who used to call hydrocarbons 'Mother Nature's Battery'. Its almost a miracle when you think of it. Millions of years of solar energy stored in solid, liquid, and gas forms, available for the ingenuity of man to extract and use to power the marvels of the modern world.

For all the hate that hydrocarbons get they are probably the main reason most of us aren't still living a very primitive existence.